PH/DS/AAS and Muscle Memory

I hear many people complain about the muscle (i.e. size, strength) loss after getting off anabolic compounds. My question is ... why is there a loss? What physiologically causes this? Also, If there is an immediate or rapid reduction in size, strength, etc.. - will this not return after the body return to a more normal hormonal state? Our muscle has "memory" doesn't it? I did a couple of cycles of real gear a coupe of decades ago. Gained a lot of mass/strength. Then after a couple of years I stopped lifting... for about 18 years. I recently (about a year ago) started lifting again and have lost a ton (80 lbs) of fat and put on a bunch of muscle. My lifts are already near my personal bests and my body (while I still need to lose some more fat) appears to be nearly as muscular as it did back in "the good old days."

Factor One: Genectics: your body has a genectic capability. and a "set point." thats why jay culter is as big as he is. no matter how many cycles of roids you do, you still wont be as big as jay unless you have the genectics to support it. when you use roids you can surpass your genetic capability. but once youre off them your body is going to go back to that "set point" that it is genetically capabilie of being at.

Factor Two: Testosterone: plain and simple test=muscle. and when youre on cycle your test levels are through the atmosphere. which is a muscle building masterpiece. and can support all that growth because of the amounts of test that are running through your veins. once you get off cycle. your body natural test levels may not be able to support the genectally high levels of new muscle tissue. this is also why strength goes down.

Factor three: muscle memory: I have heard many times that the cells you gain in muscle from weight lifting never go away. they just shrink from not being used. with activation through weight lifting of those fibers they reactivate and grow again. now, i dont personally believe this. i believe that you lose the fibers due to inactivity. but this is the theory of muscle memory.

factor four: neuromuscular development: when a person begins weight lifting, the first month is filled with weights going from 35 pounds to 135 pounds. this has nothing to do with the amount of muscle gained. this is due to your PNS/CNS learning to recruit fibers, run neuromuscular pathways, ect ect that allows you to lift the weight with cordination. this is what i believe happened with you. not muscle memory. since you havent lifted in a while you lost that neuro connection. since you had it before your body shifted back into gear and woke those pathways back up. not muscle memory. imo thats a theory. not fact. nuero recruitment is a fact.

So then how does running a PCT allow one to "keep" the "gains" that he acquired while on the hormones? TravisG, is this your factor 2 from above? And if so, wouldn't the "gains", after being "lost", just rebound after a persons hormone levels return to a balanced state?

I hear many people complain about the muscle (i.e. size, strength) loss after getting off anabolic compounds. My question is ... why is there a loss? What physiologically causes this? Also, If there is an immediate or rapid reduction in size, strength, etc.. - will this not return after the body return to a more normal hormonal state? Our muscle has "memory" doesn't it? I did a couple of cycles of real gear a coupe of decades ago. Gained a lot of mass/strength. Then after a couple of years I stopped lifting... for about 18 years. I recently (about a year ago) started lifting again and have lost a ton (80 lbs) of fat and put on a bunch of muscle. My lifts are already near my personal bests and my body (while I still need to lose some more fat) appears to be nearly as muscular as it did back in "the good old days."

So what about this "memory"?

I can assure you that muscle memory is not a "theory", although once upon a time it was. Just like germs. But I'll get into that in a second. When using an anabolic compound you risk shutting down your natural testosterone, anywhere from a few weeks or in some cases, forever, this is known as testicular desensitization. So naturally, when you get off of your compound and your test levels are little to none, it is a must to use proper PCT (post cycle therapy) to keep most, if not all of your gains. Losing strength is going to happen when your test levels get low but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to lose size. If your PCT is strong and your caloric intake is high, you should be able to hold on to it. Infact, I just finished a Phera cycle and gained 10 lbs. dry, on cycle and another 3 lbs. post cycle. Now, lets get to bottom of this muscle memory.

Following a period of resistance training, MHC IIX content decreases from just over 9% to 2.0%, with a corresponding increase in MHC IIA (42% to 49%). Following detraining the amount of MHC IIX reach values that are higher than before and during resistance training, over 17%!
Myosin heavy chain isoforms, or MHCs, refer to the types of contractile protein you see in a given muscle fiber. MHCs determine how the muscle fiber functions. MHCs are what make a fiber "fast twitch", "slow twitch", or something in-between. Certain MHCs are known to undergo a change in response to resistance exercise. In this case, fibers that contain MHC IIX are fibers that arenít really sure what kind of fiber they are until they are called to action. Once recruited, they become MHC IIAs. So, fibers containg MHC IIX proteins serve as a reservoir of sorts for muscle hypertrophy because the can transform themselves into fibers containing MHC IIX which grow easily in response to training. Resistance training decreases the amount of MHC IIX while reciprocally increasing MHC IIA content and during detraining an "overshoot" or doubling in the percentage occurs of MHC IIX isoforms.

asoulecpt. i went to school for all of this. first off the statement that you just wrote up isnt wrong but it has nothing to do with the theory of muscle memory. it has to do with contractile strengths of myosin chains. and secondly, you cant change fast twitch muscles into slow and slow into fast. certain muscles are preloaded at birth on which fiber type they are. YOU CAN MAKE ONE TYPE OF FIBER MORE DOMINENT BY CERTAIN TYPES OF TRAINING BUT NOT CHANGE IT. this is again a theory that has been around for many years yanking the general public. this is what makes world class sprinters, world class sprinters and why bob from your high school could never be as good as him. cause the lighting bolt who just broke the world record is loaded with a ton of fast twitch fibers when he popped out of his moms womb that bob wasnt genectically lucky enough to get. again, I WENT TO COLLEGE FOR ALL THIS. what you just wrote up has nothing to do with that fact that muscle fibers either shrink or go away due to inactivity. which is what muscle memory is.

secondly, testicular desensistization is due to LH and HCG. and has SOME..but very little to directly due with testosterone. test is all coresponding to the atrophy of the nut sack.

So, fibers containg MHC IIX proteins serve as a reservoir of sorts for muscle hypertrophy because the can transform themselves into fibers containing MHC IIX which grow easily in response to training. Resistance training decreases the amount of MHC IIX while reciprocally increasing MHC IIA content and during detraining an "overshoot" or doubling in the percentage occurs of MHC IIX isoforms.[/QUOTE]

And what this is saying is that due to resistance training your body GAINS (hypertrophy) MHC IIX muscle fibers. not change them. this is how your arms or any other body part gets bigger. HYPERTROPHY. not a fiber coming back from inactivity. sorry to tear you apart but i spent countless nights reading this awesome crap!

Fourthermore, congrats on gaining three pounds in PCT. thats awesome as well!

ANND one more. detraining isnt inactivity. its decreasing your workout days. athletes do this to prepare for an event so that they are not overtraining when this event comes. so again, not the theory of inactivity and muscle memory.

and again, furthermore the true defintion to muscle memory is nuerological as i stated in my first post. its your body getting used to certain movement. such as flat dumbbell presses. your nuero pathways getting used to the agonist/antagonist muscles supporting and pushing the dumbbells from a top position to 90 degrees and back up. this is why when someone new to lifting trys this lift they seem all shaky. but two weeks later. they went up weight and dont shake anymore. neurological pathways! which is the true name for muscle memory.